U.S. Army opens new 155mm artillery shell facility in Kansas

The U.S. Army and Day & Zimmermann have inaugurated a new artillery Load, Assemble, and Pack facility in Parsons, Kansas, dedicated to the production of 155mm M795 artillery projectiles.

The ribbon-cutting ceremony was hosted by Maj. Gen. John T. Reim, Portfolio Acquisition Executive for Agile Sustainment and Ammunition, marking what Army officials described as a critical step in expanding the nation’s artillery munitions production capacity.

The new plant represents a $36 million Army investment in non-recurring engineering and production establishment activities. At full operational capacity, the Parsons facility will be capable of producing 12,000 M795 projectiles per month. That output feeds directly into the Army’s broader goal of scaling 155mm production across the defense industrial base to 100,000 rounds per month — a target that reflects the urgency with which the service is approaching munitions capacity after years of drawdown and under-investment in domestic shell manufacturing.

Maj. Gen. Reim used the occasion to situate the Kansas opening within a larger Army-wide industrial push. “This facility is a testament to the strength of the partnership between the U.S. Army and American industry. It marks the 13th ribbon cutting in the Army’s ongoing campaign to strengthen the Arsenal of Freedom through munitions production, modernization and expansion of our Defense Industrial Base,” Reim said during the ceremony. “The speed and scale of our response to current global conflicts demand that we increase production capacity of critical munitions like 155mm artillery. The work done here in Parsons is another important step in furthering a credible deterrence with the added industrial capacity to sustain combat operations over time.”

The Load, Assemble, and Pack process — commonly abbreviated as LAP — is the final manufacturing stage before a 155mm shell is ready for delivery to the warfighter. It is at this stage that the inert steel projectile body is filled with explosive material, fitted with its fuze components, and packaged for shipment and storage. The Parsons facility handles this final and most operationally critical phase of the production chain, making it a linchpin in translating raw industrial capacity into combat-ready ammunition. The plant incorporates enhanced automation and refined manufacturing processes designed to deliver what the Army describes as unmatched production efficiency.

The M795 is a standard high-explosive 155mm artillery projectile used across a wide range of howitzer platforms in U.S. and allied inventories. It is one of the most widely fired artillery rounds in the world and serves as a foundational munition for ground combat — providing artillery units with the explosive firepower needed to suppress enemy positions, destroy equipment, and support infantry maneuver. The round’s compatibility with multiple 155mm howitzer systems, including the M109 Paladin self-propelled howitzer and the M777 towed howitzer, gives it broad utility across joint and coalition operations.

The scale of global artillery consumption over the past three years has fundamentally reset expectations about what adequate munitions stockpiles look like. The war in Ukraine demonstrated early and repeatedly that modern high-intensity land combat burns through artillery ammunition at rates that peacetime production lines were never designed to sustain. Western nations, including the United States, found themselves supplying tens of thousands of rounds to Ukrainian forces while simultaneously confronting the reality that their own stockpiles and production infrastructure had atrophied significantly since the Cold War. The Army’s accelerated investment in LAP capacity and shell production is a direct institutional response to that lesson.

Day & Zimmermann has operated the Lone Star Army Ammunition Plant in Texas and other munitions facilities for decades, making the company one of the U.S. government’s most experienced partners in the production and handling of artillery munitions. Its role in establishing the Parsons facility extends that relationship into Kansas, adding geographic and industrial redundancy to the Army’s artillery production network at a moment when supply chain resilience has become a strategic priority in its own right.

The Parsons facility is, by Army count, the 13th production or modernization ribbon-cutting in the service’s ongoing munitions expansion campaign — a figure that illustrates both the breadth of the effort and the pace at which the Army has moved to stand up new capacity. Each new or upgraded facility represents a node in a production network that the Army is racing to build out before existing stockpile commitments outpace supply. With the Kansas plant now operational and ramping toward its 12,000-round monthly ceiling, the Army has added another concrete increment of capacity to a program whose ultimate target — 100,000 rounds per month — remains the benchmark against which all of these investments will ultimately be measured.